


Butterflies (Hollywood, 1995)

by TeamMightyPen



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Angst, Heavy Angst, TW Vomiting, i'm not sorry prepare yourself to cry, there's only a happy ending if you think really hard, tw death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:06:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29490285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamMightyPen/pseuds/TeamMightyPen
Summary: “Eat up, boys. Because after tonight, everything changes.”"That's a weird flavor.""Chill, man. Street dogs haven't killed us yet."Jump CutAn ambulance drives through the streets of Hollywood.-This is what happens during the jump cut.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 65





	Butterflies (Hollywood, 1995)

**Author's Note:**

> Ummm yeah this is probably gonna hurt. Only proceed if you're prepared. Brace yourself.

“Eat up, boys. Because after tonight, everything changes.”

Hear, hear.

Alex cheers-ed his hotdog with Reggie and Luke in a toast. Together, they all bit down. 

Alex was immediately struck with an unexpected sour tinge on his tongue. Were hotdogs supposed to taste like that? He turned the hotdog over in his mouth, chewing slowly.

“That’s a new flavor,” Alex said, hoping one of the others tasted the tanginess too.

Reggie leaned forward to meet Alex’s eyes, his typical carefree smile on his face. “Chill, man. Street dogs haven’t killed us yet.”

Alex liked seeing Reggie as happy as he was tonight. It didn’t happen nearly often enough anymore that Reggie’s face lit up the way it was right then. Alex didn’t want to ruin that with his worry that was probably unfounded. Reggie was right. This was just Alex stressing about nothing.

Alex thought back on what Luke had just said. After tonight, everything would change. Tonight was an ending, but also a beginning.

There were two types of endings in Alex’s mind. The first was the type that you know is coming. It feels like it’s never gonna happen and then all of a sudden it’s upon you and you know things are about to end. It’s an ending that you can anticipate and expect. The second type of ending was the kind where you don’t know something is ending until it’s already over, and you never got a chance to cherish your last moment before everything changed. 

Alex didn’t like the second type of ending, it made him anxious. The first kind was like the last day of school, which always feels so far away until suddenly it’s May and you only have a few weeks left. Everything leading up to the last day is spent knowing that soon, you’d never be in this classroom again. You could prepare for the first kind.

The second kind was like when Alex was twelve and his grandpa died unexpectedly. Alex hadn’t seen Grandpa since Christmas and he hadn’t known then that it would be their last time together. He’d felt robbed of the opportunity to know that his last moments with Grandpa were his last moments with him. If he had known, he would’ve worked harder to soak in every moment, knowing it was a last. But he never even got the chance to do that before everything changed because before he could even blink it was different. 

_ After tonight, everything changes. _

Yeah, Alex really, really didn’t like the second type of ending. So he was grateful tonight was the first type. Alex didn’t really handle change well, so the heads-up was more than welcome.

By the time morning came, Sunset Curve would be among the stars, no longer in obscurity.

He didn’t want to ruin these last moments they had together like this with his baseless worry. Anyway, this was probably just a brand of mustard that Alex had never tried before.

Alex took another bite.

~~~

Reggie didn’t know why he felt so nervous for their performance tonight. Sure, this was the biggest night of their life and would hopefully be the pivot point launching Sunset Curve into stardom, but that was besides the point. Reggie didn’t get nervous about things like that. He’d rocked the sound check and so had the other guys, and they all felt ready to go.

If anyone should be nervous tonight, it would be Alex with his anxiety.

Speaking of Alex --

“Shouldn’t we head back soon?” the drummer asked, leaning forward.

Luke checked his watch. “Nah man, we still got time. Let’s just...savor this moment a bit longer.” He cleared his throat and shook his head back and forth, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. “One more hour and our lives will never be the same, right? I wanna remember every part of tonight.”

That sounded nice.

Reggie still felt nervous though.

He tried to do that trick his middle school teacher had taught him years back. 

_ “When you feel nervous, that’s the same physical reaction your body has when you feel excited. So try to convince yourself that those butterflies you’re feeling in your tummy,” Mrs. Roberts pointed at Reggie’s belly and he giggled, “are actually excited butterflies, not nervous butterflies.” _

He wasn’t nervous, he was excited. He couldn’t wait to get up on that stage and play his heart out.  _ Yeah, Reggie, _ he thought to himself,  _ you tell those butterflies who’s boss! _

Only, that didn’t feel like it was just butterflies anymore.

A look at his bandmates told him that they were feeling something similar.

Alex still sat leaning with his elbows on his knees, but his face had paled and his eyes were out of focus and staring into space, and his lips were shut tight enough to whiten the skin around them. Luke was leaned back, grimacing with his eyes closed and gently rubbing one hand over his stomach.

Suddenly and involuntarily, Reggie gagged. Nothing came up, but he felt that swirling yuckiness in the top of his stomach that meant something was going to soon. 

Yeah, this wasn’t butterflies.

Reggie tried to sit still and quell whatever had his stomach in a twist, knowing that if he wasn’t careful he could easily bring up his dinner but that if he tried really hard to keep it down he just might be successful. In between shallow breaths he kept just swallowing over and over.

Reggie gagged again but again managed to hold everything down. 

Alex wasn’t so lucky.

In a sudden motion that grabbed Reggie’s attention, Alex’s eyes bugged out and his cheeks puffed up. He stood abruptly with one hand clutching his middle and the other a fist over his mouth. Alex dashed a short distance away from the couch to the bare wall before them before doubling over and coughing up the contents of his stomach.

Oh, no.

Reggie leaned over the arm of the couch and followed suit.

~~~

Luke didn’t know why this was happening to them.

They should have been backstage hyping each other up right then, not all three of them hunched over in an alley, sitting on a ratty old couch, puking their guts up.

Soon after Alex and Reggie started throwing up, Luke couldn’t hold it back any longer either and he ended up barely able to lean forward before everything started coming up for him too.

The couple sitting next to their couch had been in the periphery of Luke’s vision when they startled up.

“Oh my god, are you guys okay?”

Did it look like they were okay?

Involuntarily, Luke remembered the time he had had the stomach flu back when he’d been eleven, curled around a bucket on the couch they’d made into a sick bed or kneeled in front of the toilet on the cold tile with the small bath rug under only one of his knees. He remembered the way his mom was always there, rubbing his back soothingly and whispering to him that it was okay and he was okay and she was sorry he felt so bad. She would always have a damp towel nearby for him to wipe his mouth after he was done and she would gather him up into a hug and rock him back and forth on her lap even though he was too big for her to do that anymore.

Luke missed that hand on his back and those words in his ears. He wished he had something he could use to wipe his mouth but all they had were the papers they’d carried the hotdogs in, which were too thin and flimsy to even be used as a coffee filter.

In the dark alley, just three minutes from the Orpheum, surrounded by crumbly bricks and two of his brothers who were both just as miserable as he was, Luke had only one overwhelming thought.

He wanted his mom.

Luke wanted to be taken care of. He wanted to be at home with a blanket around his shoulders. He wanted his parents to be on either side of him, not for the three of them to have not spoken for over half a year.

Luke’s vomiting slowed after a few minutes and he coughed a couple more times but seemed to be done for now. 

A metallic taste mingled with the sour bile in his mouth when he spit into the pile of sick between his feet. 

Luke brought a finger up to his lip and it pulled away a deep red. Luke looked down and saw a matching red mixed into the puddle of chewed-up hotdog and water and something else he’d had for lunch that was now just a liquidy orange goop.

“Oh my god,” the lady said again. “Someone call an ambulance!”

~~~

Bobby stopped Rose mid-sentence. “Hey - sorry - what time is it? Don’t you think the other guys should be back by now?”

Rose looked around the venue and Bobby spun halfway around to do the same.

The Orpheum was still sparse as it had been during the sound check, if not even more so. The doors hadn’t opened yet so the crowd was still outside, and a few sound tech and stage crew people were chatting happily in the corner opposite Bobby and Rose.

“Maybe...they got back and went backstage and you didn’t notice?”

“Yeah...maybe. I’ll go look for them.” Bobby pushed off the counter and, with a salute back to Rose as a goodbye, made his way back toward the stage wing whose hall would lead to the green room. 

Bobby liked Rose, she was nice and into music. He figured Luke would like her too, with how much he liked to talk about music unifying or connecting or whatever. Rose seemed to understand that sort of stuff on a deeper level like Luke did, the way Bobby never quite could. He hoped they would all get to talk again after the show.

Bobby hopped up on the stage and used his arm to swing himself around the wall, his feet making quick steps down the stairs. “Hey, guys? Doors open in five, where are you?”

The door to the green room was shut. Bobby swung it open and stepped inside.

“Dudes?”

It was empty.

Come on, were they really not back yet from their hotdogs? Bobby knew that Reggie could lose track of time when he was lost in his own head and that Luke often got so deep into his passion for music that before he’d know it he was late, but Alex should’ve been the one to make sure they were back by now.

His boys weren’t flakes.

Especially not for something as important as a performance.

Bobby raced through the rest of the Orpheum’s lower level, opening every door in case the guys were inside any of the small rooms.

His feet carried him back up to the stage and across the floor to Rose.

“I can’t find them anywhere,” he huffed, out of breath both from his frantic searching and his worry. “You can’t let them open the doors yet, I’m gonna go look for them.”

Rose nodded, concern painted across her own face, too. “I’ll pass on the message.”

Bobby nodded once. His eyes swept across the room and his hand ran through his hair as he took a shaky breath.

“Okay. I’ll...okay.”

He turned and rushed for the side doors to the alley, this time without a goodbye thrown back to Rose.

He had to find his boys.

~~~

Alex could taste his own vomit with every exhale, and that alone made him almost go for another round. He probably would’ve, if he hadn’t already completely puked up everything he had in him and then some.

The convulsions of his abdomen weren’t going away, though, even after he’d emptied himself and had no more to give.

He hadn’t been able to pull his fist away in time, so even though he wanted to wipe his sweat-soaked hair out of his face, he didn’t, because his hand had his dinner and lunch and breakfast on it.

Alex had been distantly aware of other people talking around him, their voices panicked and fast, but he hadn’t been able to make out any of the words through his foggy mind and through all of the noise he himself was making. He was retching so hard that his throat burned two-fold, both from the acidic bile and from the force of his coughs.

He heard sirens ringing through the streets and it made his head throb even harder than before. Another wave of sick came upon him and he bent over again to let it up, stumbling on shaky legs.

Hands settled on his shoulders while he choked up blood and acid. They led him backwards until he tripped and fell onto a surface that caught him.

Alex’s gaze fell on his brothers for a split-second. Luke was folded in half on the middle of the couch, and Reggie’s legs had come up into a fetal position with his arms wrapped around his torso. 

The hands eased Alex down until he was lying down on his side, but he still pushed his head to the edge of the surface so that he was throwing up off the side and not onto himself. In-between heaves his blurry vision saw that these people were paramedics and there were more collecting Reggie and Luke.

When they started moving him, it did  _ not _ calm the pain down.

Alex felt a pain in his chest, in his core, in his  _ soul, _ that was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He knew right then,

_ I’m dying. _

But surprisingly, as Alex’s vision started going darker around the edges, he found he wasn’t freaking out about it. Why wasn’t he freaking out about it??

No, instead, it was just a deep sadness settling in the pit of Alex’s gut.

_ Oh, _ he thought through the coughing.  _ This is the second kind of ending, after all. _

No Orpheum. No superstars. No legends.

No goodbyes.

And just like that time Alex’s grandpa died, Alex felt robbed. He’d had every opportunity in the world laid out ahead of him, but now they were all abruptly being taken from him. All because they had been stupid - so, so  _ stupid! I can’t believe we’re dying to hotdogs! _

Alex would never see  _ Sunset Curve _ on an album cover.

He’d never walk on stage as the lights came up, thousands of screaming fans cheering for them.

He’d never get to fall in love.

He’d...he would never get to tell his brothers how much he loved them, one last time.

It was all stolen from him.

_ We were gonna be legends. _

~~~

Bobby heard the sirens as they rang out through the Hollywood streets.

They kept getting closer.

Oh God, they were too close.

Why were they so nearby??

The lights came around the corner while Bobby was still searching the area around Sunset Boulevard and the Orpheum. He covered his ears and winced as it passed, but it stopped just another block ahead of him. While he was still a ways out, paramedics burst out of the back with three gurneys and hurried down the alley between an office building and Reggie’s favorite pizza place.

No.    
  


Oh, no.

Bobby’s feet staggered down the path, drunkenly carrying him further until he could hear anxious voices overlapping with one another.

A crowd had gathered in a semicircle around the entrance to the alley. Bobby recognized some of them as Sunset Curve fans who came to all of their shows.

  
He stood, stunned, to the side as the medics rushed back to the ambulance with the three gurneys -- now filled -- in tow and lifted them up into the back of the vehicle. 

No.

_ No. _

Bobby shouldered past the people in front of him.

_ Reggie. Luke. Alex. _

Their fronts were messy and their faces were flushed and they wouldn’t stop coughing and vomiting and they looked so small and young and oh God, they were all only seventeen, what was going on, what had happened to them, they were just kids, they--

“Sir- sir, you can’t come with us.” One of the paramedics gripped Bobby’s arm and was keeping him from climbing into the back of the ambulance with them.

Bobby was gasping for breath. His throat felt tight. “No, no you don’t understand, they’re my band, I have to go-”

“I understand. I’m sorry. We’ll do our best to help them. But you can’t come with us, I’m sorry.” She gave him what was supposed to be a reassuring smile but Bobby felt anything but.

He looked over her shoulder to the boys. Alex was already moving less with every cough and Bobby’s mind jumped to the worst immediately.

_ No. Stop it. _

But even though he hadn’t been told, he knew. He knew.

_ Stop it! _

In Bobby’s shock, another medic sidled around him and started shutting the doors, cutting Bobby off from his brothers.

_ “No!” _ he screamed, his face contorting as tears ran down his cheeks. Bobby threw out his arms to catch the doors just before they shut.  _ “No!!” _

He struggled, holding tight to the door as if he alone could keep them from taking his boys without him. As if wishing would make it so that this wasn’t happening. To make it all alright.

Someone from the small crowd which had amassed wrapped his arms around Bobby’s middle and tugged him back. The door handle slipped out of his fingers and a cry of anguish tore itself from Bobby’s throat, wet and guttural, an animalistic sound that was surely damaging his voice. Bobby tried to throw the arms off of him but they only tightened. 

“You have to let them do their work, son. They’ll try to help your friends the best they can.”

The ambulance was gone.

Bobby kept struggling until the sirens were gone, too. At some point he wasn’t held back anymore and he started running down Sunset Boulevard, but he knew already that he was too late to catch up with them.

All at once, the fight drained out of him and his legs went numb. Bobby fell to his knees on the sidewalk and screamed. No words came out, only agonizing emotion that rang through the streets of Hollywood.

~~~

Is this what Luke’s whole life had come to? Really?

Dying in the back of an ambulance because he ate a poisoned hot dog?

This sucked.

By now they were  _ supposed to be _ rocking out in the biggest gig of their life. But they were decidedly...not.

He couldn’t control his body anymore as his limbs responded involuntarily to spasms radiating fire from his core out to the rest of his body. Finally after an amount of time he hadn’t measured, he’d stopped throwing up, either blood or puke, but he was still coughing almost constantly.

Medics swarmed around him, keeping a constant active watch on Luke, Reggie, and Alex while they transported the incomplete band to the hospital. They tried to lay Luke still on his back but he couldn’t stay that way. He kept shifting in discomfort and pain but nothing was making it go away. 

_ Mom would be able to make it go away. _

What he wouldn’t give to feel her comforting hand on his forehead right then, just one last time. 

Spots began dancing in Luke’s eyes so he shut them tight enough that it hurt. A part of Luke seemed to want to be as small as possible, so he wrapped his arms around himself, hiding pointlessly from he-didn’t-know-what, futile because he already knew what was coming. What was happening.

Shouts rose from right beside him where Luke thought Alex was.

Luke curled up tight on his side and didn’t acknowledge the tears leaking out of his eyes.

_ Looks like the clock’s not the only thing lying broken now, huh, Mom?  _ Luke thought wryly, a sore attempt at morbid humor that had no place in this situation.

He opened his eyes and turned his head to look up at the ceiling of the ambulance, at the textured metal along the walls and the too-bright light that shone directly into him.

Luke stopped fighting. He let his eyes flutter shut.

…

_ “Heart rate dropping!” _

_ “Get the defibrillator!” _

_ “Charging to 130 joules...clear!” _

Luke came back into himself with a gasp which led immediately into more coughing. His mind carried him back to seven months ago. 

His last conversation with his mom.

It hadn’t even been a conversation, not really.

The radio had been playing Christmas music from the corner of the living room but it was drowned out by their shouting.

No, he didn’t want to see this. Thankfully it was dissolving into nothingness again, and he gladly let it, letting the nothingness swallow him.

_ “Charging again, 160 joules...clear!” _

Luke saw the handlebars of his bike while he swiped at his eyes, breathing in sharply in an attempt to keep himself from crying while he rode away. He heard the heartwrenching sobs of his mom, even though he didn’t look back. He couldn’t let himself, or else he wouldn’t be able to keep going. Luke wondered if the last thing he would ever hear would be that sound, of his mom’s heartbreak. He didn’t want it to be, but he couldn’t bring forth the effort in his mind to picture anything else to replace the echoing cries in his head. Those too began to fade.

_ “200 joules...clear!” _

He saw Bobby’s shocked face the morning after when he had been discovered on the couch in the studio. He saw months fly by, writing countless lyrics, practicing dozens of songs, goofing around with the boys. Luke saw himself lying on that leather couch at night, failing to suppress all of his emotions in the silence while the only light in the studio was the dim beams of moonlight falling through the garage door’s windows. 

_ “260...come on, kid, come back to us.” _

He saw  _ Unsaid Emily _ where it still sat in his songbook, unrecorded and never to be heard by anyone at all. He wondered what would happen to it, where all their instruments would go. Whether their things would be sold or donated or would just collect dust. His songbook was sitting on the coffee table in the studio right then. Luke wanted it with him. He wanted to hug it to his chest in his time of dying.

Luke saw his parents’ faces the last time he’d snuck up to see them, ducking behind a tree to not be seen in return. He saw the sorrow on his mom’s face and the fractured expression on his dad’s. He saw them both trying so hard not to break down under the grief that came from living in a house too quiet, a house covered in the heavy layer of words never said and of a family smaller than it should’ve been.

Luke didn’t have a lot of regrets from his seventeen and a half years, but he regretted running out on his parents so much that it brought a different kind of pain to his chest.

He’d never gotten to prove to them that his dreams had been worth pursuing.

He’d never gotten to say he was sorry.

And now he was drifting away where he lay, fading to oblivion, being reduced to irrelevance, with nothing to his name but a handful of songs and a too-short lifetime worth of memories. He’d never get his chance.

_ Maybe time would not erase me _

Who was he kidding? He was already gone.

~~~

Reggie was the only one left.

He knew that. He didn’t want to open his eyes to see.

Luke and Alex were--they had--

_ Dead. _

The word sounded in Reggie’s head like the dark toll of a bell reverberating out.

_ Dead. _

Somehow, Reggie wasn’t yet.

The ambulance turned a corner and Reggie’s weight rolled to one side before coming back. He wrapped his arms around himself as shudders recoiled through his body without stopping. He clenched his abdominal muscles against the pain.

“Reginald? Stay with me, kid.”

They must’ve found his ID from his wallet.

Reggie opened his eyes and saw the face of the paramedic who had spoken above him. He lifted his head off the gurney to see more. The guy was young, probably in his mid to late twenties. He was new. He didn’t deserve to have kids die on him like this.

The man smiled in a way that seemed an attempt to ease Reggie. “I’m Jacob. We’re gonna get you to the hospital soon, just hold on.”

Reggie swallowed and gasped. He blinked his eyes and nodded a miniscule amount, his mouth agape to let through his labored, croaky breaths. His head fell back down and his eyes went out of focus on the ceiling.

Alex and Luke were gone.

Them two and Bobby were basically his whole family. His parents had picked their fighting back up in recent weeks, and he’d spent more nights sleeping over at Alex’s house to escape the noise than he’d spent at his own.

Oh God, Alex was dead.

Reggie wasn’t.

But-

But Sunset Curve was.

Reggie thought of all the dream’s they’d had together. For their future.

_ Dead. _

His breathing was uneven. He would hold his breath in as long as he could before letting it out and inhaling sharply once more. Reggie clenched his teeth and wrapped his arms tighter, one leg bending.

He was fighting to stay.

He thought about his parents. He’d be leaving them behind if he let go. 

_ They probably wouldn’t care. _

He would be giving up on a future where he could have his own family, the possibility of finding a wife one day. He could raise his kids in a house without any fighting where they each felt important and loved.

But...his family wouldn’t be complete without Alex and Luke.

Reggie mourned for everything he was losing. The future, the family, the performing, all the love he’d never gotten to give.

Even as he lay there, grimacing, he could feel himself growing weaker. Who knew if he would be able to make it all the way to the hospital, or if he did, whether he’d make it through the night.

Reggie opened his eyes again and squinted against the bright lights. Jacob was still next to him. Reggie lifted his hand, seeking, and Jacob grabbed it. Reggie held tight. He wanted to be holding someone’s hand.

Reggie didn’t think he would be able to go on even if he survived this. His brothers were the world to him, and if they were...gone, then so was his world. Bobby was still there. Reggie would be leaving Bobby behind.

Bobby had always been stronger than him, though. Braver. He would be able to keep going.

Even if…

Even if he lost everyone just like that.

He was strong.

Reggie...wasn’t.

Jacob grabbed Reggie’s hand with his other one, so now both of his hands were encasing Reggie’s. It was almost like he knew Reggie had made his decision. “We’re almost there, Reginald, stay with us!”

Jacob didn’t deserve this.

Bobby didn’t deserve this.

_ I’m sorry, Bobby. _

Reggie stopped fighting.

Reggie let go.

The fire inside of him grew hotter and brighter until it engulfed him completely. Reggie cried out. It was burning more painful than anything he’d ever felt.

And then the burning went away. Suddenly it was gone and Reggie was encased in a different feeling.

It felt like when he would cannonball into the swimming pool in the summer, and he would feel weightless, and the millions of tiny bubbles would be racing all around him. In the pool, he couldn’t tell up from down but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

The bubbles felt like the wings of a thousand butterflies all fluttering and flapping around him. The butterflies in his stomach from less than a half an hour ago weren’t in his stomach anymore. They were enveloping him, wrapping him up, lifting him up.

Reggie started floating upwards, rising, feeling a peace settle in the hollow of his chest. He twisted midair and saw himself still laying with his hand held between both of Jacob’s. His body had gone limp. Reggie saw Luke and Alex lying in similar states just feet from where he lay. All four paramedics in the cab of the ambulance looked absolutely heartbroken.

Reggie kept rising on the wings of the butterflies. They carried him up toward the sky. He rose above the streets of Hollywood, out of reach of the lamps and the lights. He marvelled at the sky like he’d never seen it before, a purple-black expanse of glittering stars.

_ This is nice,  _ he thought, before the purple and the glitter disappeared and it was just black.

~~~

Rose found him. He was still crying in the street. His wails had turned to sobs which had themselves petered out after a wave of exhaustion came over him. Now it was just silent tears and quiet gasps and soft whimpers.

She didn’t say anything, she just sunk to her knees and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. He couldn’t stand up so she guided him to the wall so he could lean against it. He brought his knees into his chest and buried his face in his lap.

They were only seventeen.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway so I headcanon that the jolts imitate they way you died, so every time the boys jolt in the show they're reliving these moments.


End file.
